John Sevier

John Sevier (23 September 1745-24 September 1815) was Governor of Tennessee from 30 March 1796 to 23 September 1801, succeeding William Blount and preceding Archibald Roane, and again from 23 September 1803 to 20 September 1809, succeeding Roaneand preceding Blount. Sevier was known for his command of frontier militia in dozens of battles during the American Revolutionary War and Northwest Indian War.

Biography
John Sevier was born on 23 September 1745 in Rockingham County, Virginia to a family of Huguenots that had arrived in the Thirteen Colonies in 1740. He arrived on the Tennessee frontier in the 1770s, and he became one of the five magistrates of the Watauga Association, a semi-autonomous country that existed from 1772 to 1777; Sevier defended the region from the Cherokee Nations during the American Revolutionary War. In 1777, the Watauga region became a county of North Carolina, and Sevier entered the North Carolinian militia, fighting at the Battle of King's Mountain in 1780 against the Tories of Patrick Ferguson. Following the war, he proceeded to destroy several Chickamauga towns in the state of Georgia, and he became a Brigadier-General of the "Southwest Territory" in the early 1790s, becoming Governor of Tennessee when it became a state in 1796. Sevier served six two-year terms, and in 1803 he nearly engaged in a duel with his rival Andrew Jackson. From 1811 to 1815, he served in the US House of Representatives, and he died on 24 September 1815.